Ubuntu Ireland LoCo 2011 year end roundup….As I saw it

January 5, 2012

One thing we suffer from in the Irish Loco is a severe lack of regular bloggers who find the time to blog about our activities. I resolved to do more on this is 2011 but, alas, I failed miserably. Hopefully 2012 will be better (both here AND on others blogs!!). As I’ve said before I am one of the least geeky member of the Irish Loco. I am just A.N. Other user of Ubuntu who partakes in the social aspects of the Irish LoCo’s activities and whatever advocacy effort that entails.

As 2011 fades away I thought I’d recall our activities from the past year just so my memories of these won’t also fade. Of course all these details can be found by viewing the Ubuntu Ireland LoCo Team Portal Page, Mailing List Archive and the Team Reports Wiki Page but I thought I’d like to review the past year, to remind myself of what was achieved, and while doing so I thought it would form the basis of a potentially interesting blog post!

So here we go……….

Ubuntu Hours were frequent in both Dublin and Limerick throughout the year but in both cities attendance dwindled and attempts were made in the latter half of the year to revitalise our approach to these. Broadly, we looked at changing the venues types for our Ubuntu Hours, we thought about mixing it up a bit like heading for a café instead of a pub. We also latched on to the idea of varying the days of the week on which Ubuntu Hours would be held.

Back at the end of bitterly cold January we hosted a bowling event in Dublin which was alot of fun. My young son got an ‘assisted’ double at the start of game 2, a fete that was captured in this picture. Also in January some members of our LoCo produced their first podcast. Unfortunately, after only a couple of episodes, time constraints halted their podcasting activities at least for the time being.

On the 2nd of April we hosted two Ubuntu Global Jam events, one in Dublin and one in Limerick. This was the first time we had a second venue participating in the Global Jam in Ireland! As always these events built on past experience. Personally, on this occasion I focussed on learning how to test Natty Narwahl, the latest iteration of Ubuntu, on my hardware. Pictures of these Irish Jams can be found here (for the Dublin Jam) an here (for the Limerick one). The Limerick Ubuntu Global Jam event featured the snazzy new Ubuntu LoCo Banner and Tablecloth (thanks go out to Canonical for providing these). Also in April, at the very end of the month, Ubuntu Ireland hosted a Natty Narwhal Release Party!! This one was held on Thursday the 28th of April. The date was chosen specifically to fulfill two criteria:

1) To have a release part on the actual date of release!

2) We wanted to see if holding the release party on a weekday evening would facilitate more potential revellers.

Ultimately we had a fun but poorly attended party. A couple of pictures of the event can be seen here. Apparently midweek release parties don’t sit well with the Irish psychi.

In May Ubuntu Ireland was confronted with the looming Reapproval Process. We held a face to face and IRC meeting to formulate our our approact to this reapproval process and to assign tasks for the completion of the application. In June we were reapproved. A picture of two members who participated in this meeting, and my enthuastic views on our successful reapproval application, can be found in an earlier post here. June 2011 was arguably the busiest month thus far for out Loco. On top of our successful reapproval we also hosted a Geeknic in Limerick during the lunch hour of 3DCamp, the first Ubuntu Ireland Geeknic to take place outside Dublin (read an earlier post here) as well as a fin meet and greet event with canonical employees at the very end of June (you can read a bit more about that here).

The second and final Geeknic of the year was held in August, back in Dublin’s Stephens Green. Historically speaking, Stephens Green was also the location for our first geeknic which was the second geeknic ever!!! (if you fancy a blast from the past take a look here). While the sun shone yet again the turnout at this geeknic was low (some pictures here). Perhaps we should return to the cooler, potentially wetter months of May and September for 2012.

On the 4th of September, for the first time ever Ubuntu Ireland hosted 3 Global Jam events spread across Ireland in Galway, Limerick and Dublin. The Makerspaces/Hackerspaces in these cities made these events possible and the thanks of our Loco community goes out to these, namely 091labs, Milklabs and TOG. In fact TOG has very kindly hosted many of our Global Jam events in the past.

In September we did not hold our montly IRC Team meeting due to poor attendance, but hey! that just proves that these LoCos are fluid entities, dependent of volunteer participation. Apart from September we held monthly IRC meetings every month in 2011.

October saw us celebrate the release of Ubuntu 11:10 Oneiric Ocelot. We returned to weekend partying for this release. The party was held on Saturday the 15th of October 2011. In honour of the Ocelot, the troops went for a bite to eat in a Mexican themed restaurant in Dublin which was, of course, followed by the mandatory trip to a pub to close out the evening. I missed the restaurant due to work but hooked up with the party when it reached the Porterhouse in Temple Bar later on. For the first time ever I had a few drinks with the guys and I must say it was a great night. There was a good turnout for this party with many new faces. I took a few pictures an the Porterhouse and they can be seen here.

A Dublin Ubuntu Hour in October and a Limerick Ubuntu Hour in December closed out the year nicely. And that was 2011.

On reflection, I reckon that was quite a lot for a small LoCo like ours. We tried a few new things that didn’t always work, but still, they were worth trying. Some members of the LoCo participated in cross group collaborative activities also.